Starcom MediaVest’s Steve Parker, VivaKi’s Marco Bertozzi and Carat’s Doug Ray on future of programmatic and its role in the TV landscape

As advertisers increasingly tip spend towards programmatic trading, The Drum spoke to agency chiefs from Starcom Mediavest Group (SMG), VivaKi, and Carat on how agency models are adapting to it, and the future of TV ad trading.

TV content has never been stronger, and “precision marketing” on the TV screen represents one of the biggest opportunities in the market for TV businesses , according to SMG Co-CEO Steve Parker.

“It’s an amazingly exciting time to be in TV – content is better than ever before, and the sellers of TV advertising are getting closer to content, and that’s’ smart.

“But obviously with this idea of precise marketing – those doors are being opened up all the time in TV – whether it’s the different type of partnership with ITV, or the amazing progress being made by Sky’s addressable Sky Adsmart product, or the broader understandings around customers with Sky IQ. Also Channel 4 is becoming a really smart data business.”

"...Data-led delivery influences everything from radio, out-of-home, to TV, as much as digital, and that’s a really exciting opportunity and could potentially be transformational in how we organise ourselves," he said.

VivaKi’s president for EMEA and NA Marco Bertozzi agreed TV could be a major area of development, albeit in a different way from the web. “When it comes to the impact on TV it won’t be a case of where suddenly all TV will be delivered in the same way as display. But if you look at how people watchTV now - it doesn’t matter where they watch it or on what screen it’s the content they want, so more and more of the TV spend is going to accessible in a way that we can target more specifically,” he said.

"Now everyone in the TV world is looking at how they – instead of doing broad demo campaigns - can do the more specficially targeted campaigns. That suits campaigns for sppecific products so for example if you're selling soap you can do big brushstroke campaigns, but it you're an insurance company to people renting their homes addressable TV may be the answer as you can target them directly," he added.

Meanwhile Carat's global president Doug Ray stressed that although linear TV will continue to exist in its current form, the more premium digital inventory will be opened up to the market and put into exchanges.

"Linear TV won’t go away – but as more digital video inventory within exchanges opens up, we will continue to look to programmatic to compelelent our linear TV campaigns. Buying audience - not buying content – is fundamentllay where we will go."

All three stressed the imporatnce of building out talent and skillsets in the areas needed to prepare for a future where programmatic trading is more dominant, both internally aand with advertiser and publisher parnters.

Bertozzi added: "The impact of programmatic on media agencies is going to be fundamental, lots of people discuss whether or not what percentage of spend will become programmatic or not – that’s a redundant question now – all spend will in some shape or form be traded programmatically in future."